Some time ago I read Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s article “How to Index Your Book (And Why I’ll Never Do It Again)” from the November 16, 2010, issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. I thought it was an excellent article that provided a visceral glimpse into Fitzpatrick’s “exhausting and frustrating” experience with self-indexing her book. As a professional indexer, I’ve worked with a number of faculty who opted to hire me for their projects, and their decision often seems to stem from one or more of the following complicating factors: time, stress, and software.

Time﻿Indexing is a slow, protracted, laborious process, even for an experienced, professional indexer. The indexing pace for a typical scholarly text averages around 10 pages per hour--averages, mind you. Highly technical and complex works can take far longer. However, without faculty and committee meetings to attend, lectures to prepare, papers and tests to grade, research to conduct, conferences to schedule, and so on, a professional indexer has the necessary time to dedicate to the text. As publishing professionals, we well know what has gone into creating a manuscript for publication, and we treat it with all the requisite care and attention it deserves, taking our time to craft an exquisite index worthy of the text. Your manuscript is your pride and joy. We understand. Our index is ours.

Stress

There’s no doubt that those who try to index their own books have gone a little grayer by the end of the process. Fitzpatrick used a full month of her sabbatical leave just to produce her book’s index, deciding in the process that she would never again do her own indexing. The stress involved in producing an index can be enormous, and the actual workflow is only part of it. As the author, you’re intimately familiar with every name, every date, and every concept. But what about your readers? How will they attempt to look up the information they’re seeking? What “tags” will they be flipping through mentally as they’re flipping through the index physically? Will their terms match yours? Professional indexers are also professional readers, paid to consume books voraciously. A substantial part of our job--and perhaps the most important part--is to think like readers. Training and experience have taught us which terms to apply, and where, and when, for maximum index utility and--dare we say it--elegance.

Software

One can indeed index a book using a word processor, an approach analogous to making orange juice with a hammer--it’s simply not the right tool for the job. It produces juice, admittedly, along with a big mess. Professional indexers use complex software designed specifically for indexing. The learning curve for these complicated programs is steep, but as with most professionally oriented software, there’s good reason: their various functions and utilities, once mastered, create a smoother, faster workflow and help to ensure that what could be an overwhelming, haphazard process is instead logical, accurate, thorough, and consistent. Mixed alphabetization, excessive undifferentiated locators, blind and circular cross-references, poor synonym control--all these misfortunes and more are avoided by an experienced indexer employing specialized software.

In her article, Fitzpatrick concludes that the cost of hiring a skilled, professional indexer is a wise investment both in the book’s utility and in the author’s sanity.